Pages

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Curmudgeon's Corner: Rant on the Chemical Garden Trilogy

Welcome back, everyone! Today I'm going to talk (ok, yeah maybe rant a little too) about the Chemical Garden Trilogy by Lauren DeStefano. There may be some mild spoilers below.

The whole trilogy centers around a 16 year old girl named Rhine, who lives in a post apocalyptic world where all men die at age 25 and women die at age 20 due to a strange virus that no one has figured out how to cure. Rich men are expected to buy multiple wives to give birth to children and keep the human race alive. Rhine has been kidnapped and married off to a man named Linden. Linden himself seems rather benign but his father, a great scientist, is incredibly creepy and may be doing some illegal experiments in the house. Rhine can only think of escape and finding her twin brother.

The first book, Wither, is actually pretty good (I gave it 4 out of 5 stars). The whole book takes place in the mansion where she is married to Linden. I felt really nauseated while reading it because of the whole idea of multiple underage wives-- especially the depiction of one of her sister wives, Cecily, who is 13 and gets pregnant first. The fact that I had such a visceral reaction to the book is a positive one, I think. My distaste for this dystopian world was because it's a terrible one. The writing is very good and many times the phrasing is eloquent and tinged with a sad beauty. My biggest issue with this book (other than the fact that I had some serious ethical issues with the world presented) is that it just seemed like a build up to the rest of the trilogy. Rhine talks and "plans" of running away, but it takes her how many pages to actually do this? I also really doubted that Rhine would have gotten away in this society and household with her virginity intact. Just saying. The strength of the book lies in the writing and the development of other characters. My favorite is probably the sad and ephemeral Jenna, the oldest sister wife.

I felt that the second book would really prove whether or not this
trilogy had staying power. Unfortunately, the second book suffers from
major middle book syndrome. It takes place right after the end of
Wither, when she finally escapes the house. I'll try not to give too
much away, but in essence, I feel like not much happens in this book.
She is searching for her brother (yes, still-- we never get to see this
kid), but unsurprisingly, runs into a lot of difficulty along the way.
She stumbles on a whore house and then stays captive by the madame who
runs it. This takes up half of the book. I just found myself growing
more and more frustrated. Finally, in the last few pages of the book, we
have more plot development. But in my opinion it's too little, too
late. I awarded this book 2 out of 5 stars.

I've read both books, and although I really liked the writing, Rhine got on my nerves quite a bit. I also thought that she spent a lot of time talking about escaping the house in Wither without putting a lot of effort into actually making it happen. I kind of laughed when she got captured in Fever, almost at the beginning of the book, by those people from the brothel. I read Fever because Wither's ending left me fairly interested in the fate of the characters, but I don't think I'll be reading Sever.

Fever sort of made me want to stab myself in the eye. It was bleak from beginning to end whereas Wither at least had moments of hopefulness and the quiet joy of watching Rhine and Gabriel learn about each other. I'm hoping the final book in the series will either lighten up a little or at least have enough action to keep me from falling into a depression like Fever did.

Favorite Italian food? Changes often, but usually lasagna. Its the best.

I feel the same about the Chemical Garden series, except I wouldn't have even given book 1 a 4 out of 5. There was an super creep factor about what was going on and I just couldn't figure out a lot of what motivated the character.

I have both Chemical Garden and Fever, but I have only read the first one. But I also found it a little disturbing how Cecily is the first one to get pregnant, and she is all happy about it at first. But overall, I thought it was a great read :). Now, I need to get started on Fever.Thanks for your rants :)

I actually didn't like Wither at first, but multiple book clubs of mine on Goodreads kept choosing it to read, so after like the third or fourth time I really got into it and realized that the writing/world building was pretty good. The second one did have middle book syndrome pretty badly. I was disappointed that nothing really happened until the end. But I will read the third one.

Having never read the series i was most interested to read your thoughts, about the Chemical Garden trilogy. I was not disapointed as your honesty was most helpful and i gained an insight into the good and bad points of these books. The striking covers have always stood out to me, but it is the strength of the plot that determines whether a book is just good or great.

I read Wither and loved it! Then, I picked up Fever, and found it a chore to read! I agree on the lack of plot development. I found the second book boring and I could not get through it. To this day it is still on my Nook unread.

I absolutely loved Wither. I also enjoyed Fever. But I do understand what you mean about all the good stuff happening at the end. I wish that there was less of the middle stuff and more of the stuff at the end. The last 50 pages was amazing. I wanted more of that!

,,Wither" was quite nice. I liked writing but I wish that there was more action and less talking about runaway. Part about experiments was really scary/ creepy (easy to imagine - big house, nowhere to run and psycho-doctor). There is something sad and beautiful in this book.

I don't know if I'll read ,,Fever" because I have a lot of different books to read first ;)

Oh poo. Well this is upsetting. I had high hopes for the rest of the series, as I thoroughly enjoyed Wither. I agree wholeheartedly that the actual society is, to be blunt, awful. But as you said, the writing carries the book well, and several of the characters (with the exception of the youngest--her willingness to please made me want to throw the book against the wall at times. She had *no* spine!) are incredibly likeable. The element of sisterhood also carries the book well.I still want to read Fever, but we'll see if I make it to the third book...

I think the idea for this trilogy is so original! I liked Wither because it explained the world so well and focused on the character interactions. While I agree with you that the 2nd book wasn't as good, I still liked it because we finally got to see some action! Don't give up on this series though because the 3rd book is better than the 2nd. It's got action, characters and a great ending!